I've just caught up with the iPlayer rerun of Prime Minister's Questions. It was the best exchange for many weeks. I'll leave the analysis to Fraser Nelson, but I thought this was David Cameron's strongest performance for a long time. In a twitter this morning I said...
David Cameron should slit the Prime Minister's political throat, then go back and slit it again.
Well he didn't quite do that, but it was the closest he has come for a long time. Brown was in better form too, I thought, given the circumstances. Nick Clegg's synthetic outrage fell flat once again. He needs a new approach.
David Cameron 8
Gordon Brown 7
Nick Clegg 4
Gordon Brown 7
Nick Clegg 4
19 comments:
Gorbals Mick acquitted himself well again I see.
1) Having a dig at Cameron for practically nothing, and giving Brown more time to think about a response to a difficult question
2) Being obessed with trying to make back bench questions little more than 1 liners. Seriously, if there is only enough time for MP's to ask questions in no more than 5 words, then PMQ's are FAR too short.
Why did Cameron not bring up Jacqui Smith's expense issue?
Any ideas people?
@no longer anonymous
I agree that the absense of both Jackie Smith and indeed ANY mention of her expenses was quite noticable.
The cynic in me says that it's because that all the MP's are sat in glass houses, and thus they were all afraid to throw stones.
For example, if Cameron had bitten the bullet and gone for the jugular, i'm sure there is at least one or more Tory MP's who are "within the letter but not the spirit of the rules" or worse. Therefore, both the other parties and the media would have great delight in beating him with his own condemnation at a later date.
The same goes for the liberals, so the issue was ignored entirelly.
Thats right, its all just a game
Iain: 7 for Brown? You're mad. The man was hopeless today. He looked dead on his feet, slurring his words, stumbling, stuttering, repeating himself. I honestly thought he might slide to the floor at any moment. It was properly the performance of a broken man. If I was his doctor, I would have been on the phone sharpish to check he had been taking his medicine.
Cameron very, very sharp and assured, however, though given the open goal facing him how could he not have been.
That said, I am still very disappointed that he said nothing about 'Jacqui' and her 'second house', the obvious question being 'How many houses does she own?' Given that the answer is one, it is clearly more than merely iniquitous that she should claim for a 'second' one, not least as it is so obviously her 'first' one.
Is it any wonder that the general public feels disenfranchised and disillusioned with the whole sorry crowd of them when the only reason for not mentioning the grotesque 'use' of the rules by the home seretary to line her pockets is that 'they're all at it'?
Politicians across the board need to clean up their acts PDQ for the sake of democracy in this country
Whatever else, your treatment of PMQs as a televised blood sport is over the top. Your twitter remark was insulting to all, including yourself.
PMQs should be something more than attempts at ritual evisceration. It is appropriate to press on matters of government policy. Now all we seem to get is alternation of ad-hominem buffoonery and daft planted questions. Neither of those greatly adds to the sum of human wit or knowledge. Once upon a time, it was acceptable for a PM to respond that he/she did not have the details, but would refer the question to the appropriate Minister for a written reply. That was when the aim of the game was to acquire information, not a quick knee-trembler. Today (as the Tory hoots to Brown's sensible reply on Bellingham's reasonable question shows) a PM is expected to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of any trivial Departmental detail. Why?
If omniscience is to be the norm, why is it then appropriate for Cameron, regularly, to be factually incorrect at PMQs? Examples: the age of Baby P's mother, and now the age of Titian at death (surely a pre-prepared line, but one that needed the Tory HQ tea-boy to do a swift bit of wiki-barbering -- which makes it farcical).
And, no, in spite of your previous sarcasm, I do not believe Brown is ever anything more than a mediocre performer in this cock-pit. At least he tries to abide by the basic rules of the game, and replying properly through the Speaker: Cameron's "you" today was a dead-give-away of someone rattled.
As a wiser man in a saner moment said: "... we need to change, and we will change, the way we behave.
"I'm fed up with the Punch and Judy politics of Westminster, the name calling, backbiting, point scoring, finger pointing."
As I recall, that was the 6th December 2005. The rest of the speech wasn't bad, either.
"He needs a new approach".
Are you touting to Tarmac Clegg's drive?
The Creator said "[Gordon Brown] was hopeless today. He looked dead on his feet, slurring his words, stumbling, stuttering, repeating himself. I honestly thought he might slide to the floor at any moment. It was properly the performance of a broken man."
But he's looked like that almost every single day for the past 18 months. I honestly get the feeling he wishes he'd never become Prime Minister now...
Your local conspiracy realist is back with this comment.
Gordon Brown had absolutely no choice, but to bail out the retail banks. Whats worse and also EXTREMELY OBVIOUS is that The people who control the system, know full well Gordon Brown had absolutely no choice.
Please all try to get this into your minds.
The establishment decide short medium and long term financial and many other government policies.
This is done by a variety of highly covert, secretive and subversive ways, one of which is through the annual Bilderberg group meetings. Denis Healy, Kenneth Clark, and Peter Mandelson being very notable and self confessed Bilderbergers. As are also The David Rockafella, ( Chase Manhatton Bank )representatives of the Rothschild family, Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands ( chairperson )and virtually every other extremely rich, important, influential and powerful mega rich corporate internationalist in the entire world.
The establishment of this country is, very largely if not completely controlled by the people who set up and ultimately control The International Banking System. Or indeed is effectively the same thing, when it comes down to IT.
That is the main reason why it is situated to a large degree, within the City of London CORPORATION. All of the rest resides in either Switzerland or New York.
Therefore the shop front of the system, which is the retail banking sector is simply the public face of the Bank of England. Which is in turn the national face of The International Banking System. The International Banking System therefore decides national and international credit availability and interest rates, and so therefore The Money Supply.
If one regards reckless bonuses as in reality deliberate inflation causing BRIBES. Which, lets face it, there is very little difference between the two, even at the best of times, ALL should start to make sense.
Both Labour and Conservative 1997 manifesto's included making interest rate levels the responsibility of The BofE, to my knowledge. Therefore out of the control of any form of accountable government.
The ENTIRE media and ALL of our political parties are either as thick as two extremely short planks, know totally ZERO about International Banking, or are desperately trying their hardest to hide the true reality of the situation from the great unwashed. This mainly because it is simply more then their lives and certainly their political or journalistic futures are worth, not to be doing so.
The banking CEO's of the retail banking sector are simply FALL GUYS for the system IMO. They can only borrow and therefore lend as much as The World Central Banks will allow them to. It is very possible that they genuinely have no idea what has really gone wrong.
This has long since been the case.
The only real difference today is that no one seems to understand or indeed DARE to to tell ANYONE, how the Worlds Banking System actually works. I have a wife and five children, so if I had any sense I would not either.
While of course elected representatives can plausibly wipe their dirty hands of all responsibility.
The money supply is decided by the people who control the system.
Therefore all the public has to do is find out whose these people are ( which is very much easier to do then it may seem ) and BINGO we have the real EVIL crooks. Or should I say criminally incompetent fools. Because they MUST be one, the other, or both.
As these people have been running the Worlds Banking System for the best part of 200 years at least. I find it highly unlikely they are incompetent fools. So you can make your own judgments as to what it all means? Why they are doing this sort of thing YET AGAIN? What if anything, we as the common people can do about it?
I would suggest that there is absolutely nothing we can do about anything at all, never mind the complete disintegration of our savings, pensions, small businesses and indeed lives. Except maybe pray for salvation, while desperately hoping there is someone divinely powerful out there, or in there, that gives a damn anymore.
However any informed, polite suggestions would be most welcome.
Please try your best not to disregard the above as conspiracy theory. As we all surly know the biggest crimes always stem from the largest conspiracies. This is not measured by the amount of people who have to fully understand the entire plot. It is measured by the importance and power of those involved, either wittingly or unwittingly.
The Bilderberg group do not run this world, and they never have. The people that run this world are very much more powerful then these people could ever have the true wits to imagine.
no longer anonymous @4:36
"Why did Cameron not bring up Jacqui Smith's expense issue?
Any ideas people?"
Er... people in glass houses ring any bells?
no mention of the cameroon gaff and the later attempt by con hq to change wiki. not a big story compared to the economy and browns bungling but do be fair. if labour had atempted to do that they would have been accused of trying to subvert the truth.
Brown held himself together better than the past (with assistance from Gorbals Mick), but just fails to engage with the questions. You can tell he's just reading out lines given to him or stuff that he practised earlier.
Cameron, by contrast, thinks and speaks on his feet. Brown just can't match him.
A commentator to a column in the Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/edmundconway/4583805/So-just-how-bad-will-the-recession-be.html
points out -
"Edmund is making a common error in allowing the continuing confusion of wealth with GDP. GDP is the aggregate of all transactions in the economy, it does not measure wealth anymore than company turnover measures net profit or cash at the bank."
"This toxic mix of tolerated error and convenience is the fabulous lie at the heart of the Brown economic illusion."
"Every year for the past decade borrowed money (many hundreds of billions of it) has been pumped into the economy. As this money has passed from hand-to-hand it has added to the total GDP number, thus each quarter GDP has grown and this simple, increasingly irrelevant fact Brown has trumpeted from the rooftops. Yet as the percentage of debt driven GDP to output driven GDP has risen, total GDP has become an increasingly erroneous indicator of wealth (but a good indicator of the speed of the train).
I have long thought GDP figures quoted by Brown are bogus and do not reflect the strength of the economy. It the point being made is true we are less well off to face the future than Brown pretends.
How long can Brown keep reality at bay. Crosby as a close as we have got to a smoking gun in a long while.
Cam and the boys seem to have messed up over Titian, eh?
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2009/02/has-cam-made-a-titian-of-himself.html
Sorry, is not a word that Cameron is likely to squeeze from Brown, but it was a good attempt.
Presume someone's re-writing his Wikipedia entry as we speak.
How old is he again..?
How about the Titian saga? I always thought Labour was the Orwellian party. But altering recorded information to support untruths told by your party leader? Tories aka Blue Labour are the true commies.
Tories must never win the next election as they'll be a greater disaster than New Labour at its worst.
The catalogue for the 2003 Titian exhibition at the National Gallery begins with an essay by Charles Hope. On the question of the birth date, Hope writes that it is not known for certain when he was born but his father had four children Titian, Francesco, Dorotea and Orsa. Francesco
"acted as Titian's assistant in 1511 and joined the army in 1513, suggesting that he was born not long after 1490. Dorotea married in early 1508, again implying a date of birth not much before 1490. Orsa seems to have been somewhat younger, since her children were born around or after 1520."
Because Titian was the eldest of Gregorio's children
"A date of birth in or just before 1490 would fit with the known facts of his early life [making him 86 when he died], although it was widely believed in his old age that he had been born ten or fifteen years earlier."
David Jaffé Titian, London: National Gallery, 2003 p.11.
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